1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of reconstructing a three-dimensional (3D) facial shape, and more particularly, to a method of reconstructing a 3D facial shape, whereby a captured 3D facial shape of a human being is reconstructed from a facial image in several frames of a captured moving picture.
2. Description of the Related Art
Images captured using outdoor cameras have been recently used to investigate suspects in various cases detected by using access control devices, Automated Teller Machines (ATMs), and Closed Circuit TV (CCTV) monitoring devices.
Although techniques for automatically generating a 3D facial shape from several frames of a captured image or moving picture have been developed in this regard, a reconstruction result of a 3D facial shape in most of these techniques significantly depends on a frame resolution of a corresponding image or moving picture. Thus, when a frame resolution of an image or moving picture is low, a reconstruction result of a 3D facial shape has a very low resolution, resulting in difficulties of using the 3D facial shape for face recognition or an investigation of a suspect. A 3D facial shape accurate enough to be used for face recognition or an investigation of a suspect may be obtained only if a human face in a close-up position is generated with high resolution from a frame of a captured image or moving picture. Thus, the scope of using these techniques is very limited.
In general, since it is difficult to acquire images of high quality by using cameras in access control devices, ATMs, CCTV monitoring devices, and so forth, and a ratio of a human face in a frame of an image or moving picture captured in a general state to the entire frame is not large, a facial region usually has a low resolution, and thus, it is difficult to use captured images for an investigation of a suspect.
As described above, the conventional 3D facial shape reconstructing techniques can be effectively used to investigate a suspect only if a specific capturing condition is satisfied, i.e., a human face is photographed in a close-up position.